Bulletins

Written in both national languages (French & Dutch), the agrometeorological bulletin has been disseminated monthly since April 2002 and during all of the agricultural season by electronic mail. It is focused on the six crops: winter wheat, fodder maize, winter barley, sugar beet, winter rape seed and potato Bintje.

A monthly meteorological situation is firstly described, followed by an analysis of crop conditions based on satellite information. Afterwards results of field observations describing the cultural phonological stages are given and finally yield predictions are put forward.

After a brief description of the meteorological situation in which the main features of the different parameters (rainfall, temperature, wind speed, humidity and radiation) are discussed, a first map representing the monthly total rainfall and a second one showing the difference between monthly rainfall and an average established for a 10 year reference period are presented. Both maps drawn up on a 10 x 10 km grid basis supply a precise idea of the local degree of drought or rainfall level.

Through systematic earth spatial observation images obtained from the NOAA-AVHRR and SPOT VEGETATION sensors, remote sensing information constitutes a significant part of the crop monitoring and yield forecasting system. Current satellite images obtained by these sensors are compared with those of the previous years (since 1995, a set of 10-day period images has been established with a
1 x 1 km² spatial resolution).

The bulletin supplies some comments and mapping information related to the previous year biomass production.

The cultural situation (crop growing stages, diseases) and a yield analysis (for crops reaching the end of the cultural season) for the current year at regional or circumscriptional scale are commented upon crop by crop.
Afterwards, yield forecasts are established for the different crops at national scale. They are presented in a histogram form with the official statistic yields of both previous years.

Lastly, a table gives the yields values (statistical ones for both previous years and forecasts for the current year) at local scale (agricultural region or circumscription) and their relative position compared to the statistical yields of the last year.

The B-CGMS Bulletins are also disseminated via the World AgroMeteorological Information Service(WAMIS).

WAMIS is a dedicated web server to make agrometeorological bulletins and advisories issued by WMO Members available to the global agricultural community and can be visited at http://www.wamis.org.